Cotard's Syndrome?

Hi, I'm new-ish here. I tend to lurk, but this is my first post. Recently, I have not been diagnosed with a dissociative disorder (DID) and schizophrenia, though they're being heavily considered, among other things, if that helps contextually with what I'm going to write here. I am not looking for a diagnosis of any sorts, just concerned about arising symptoms and wanting to express those feelings. Not a big fan of reality checking / reassurance of my existence/being alive, even if that contradicts me posting here in the first place, but it just tends to bring me more denial and frustration / distress.

== I want to make it very clear here that, throughout this entire post, there will be themes of death/dying, Abuse/Trauma, and similar themes. I will not go into explicit detail but I want to put this warning here to be safe. It is never my intention to harm anybody. ==

So basically, I think I'm dead. Realistically I know that this makes me sound strange to those who do not suffer delusions, but it feels very real to me. It's hard for me to say 'it may sound strange to those who do not suffer delusions' in the first place because alongside my feelings of being dead/in hell/rotting after a traumatic event basically exactly three years ago, nobody really feels real to me anymore, including myself. It's been increasingly difficult to consider the thoughts and feelings of anyone around me when my brain constantly presses the fact on me that nobody really is real, this is all a fabricated personal hell that I'm living in, and that I am dead. All my constant suffering and traumatic experiences are justified by this, it feels like.

I feel like I live in some kind of sick, twisted version of Groundhog Day; While the days may not be exactly the same, I experience a great deal of amnesia surrounding the previous day when I wake up the next, My routine is always extremely indifferent, and I always have to experience some kind of intense distress / abuse / manipulation at the hands of my guardians or "friends"/family / traumatic experience / misfortune in general. Every little glimmer of hope I get is instantly snatched away from me.

I experience a lot of physical and mental symptoms that also make me feel like I'm slowly decaying. It feels like my cognitive function and thought process is horrible and has drastically eroded over the years (I'm 20), and I am constantly physically ill or sick or in pain in one way or another.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and I could most certainly go further in detail why I feel this way, but I guess the bright side is that I have a psychiatrist I recently got in touch with that I can see in a week or two to talk about this with if the feelings continue. Even if I feel like they'll only be there to tell me what I'm feeling isn't real, and that I am alive, and everyone around me is real. It does not feel that way. My brain completely rejects the thought immediately upon considering it.

This is more of a "vent" than anything else, but if anyone can relate or ... I guess, offer anything else in terms of moral/emotional support, I would appreciate it. I'm not very interested in trying to bring me back into reality or trying to ground me but if that is even allowed here it may help me more than I think it would, which is not at all. xP Thank you for reading this wall of text, lol. Obviously some "part" of me knows that this isn't the case if I'm posting here to begin with, but it feels like a very small "logical over emotional" part of my brain.

Hello, and welcome.

If you're determined to believe you're dead, then there's not much I can do about it. However, I can assure you I consider myself very much alive, and I read your post, and I'm not inclined to believe a cadaver registered and posted a thread....

SAEED wrote:Obviously some "part" of me knows that this isn't the case if I'm posting here to begin with, but it feels like a very small "logical over emotional" part of my brain.

Well I can't say how it is with schizophrenia (since you are being considered for a Dx in that direction) but on a very lower plane of um, 'unusual thinking' I know being OCD I can get kinda sorta close to being delusional about some things, even though of course I understand logically it ought to be all a bunch of bull. But that doesn't stop me from believing them, anyway. Um, an example: I can't listen to the wrong music on the way to work, I can only listen to a certain playlist and if I deviate from that I'll be punished by having a very bad day at work. So yeah I can admit it is illogical but you're not making me listen to the wrong stuff either oh hell no. It's real. (even if logically it isn't). But see in my case, that's supposed to be the usual defining line between OCD and crossing over into a delusion: someone with OCD always knows deep down 'okay this is silly'. Except sometimes OCD has been documented to jump that fence after all, so sometimes I feel as if I get really close to that.

So I do sort-of understand how you can be Schrodinger's Cat- you say you're dead but yeah you're kinda not but that doesn't stop it from 'yeah I'm dead'. Yeah, I can understand. Push come to shove, however, I can default to logic.

I used to haunt* these forums daily, but haven't for a long time, and suddenly today I found myself reading your post. As a great believer in synchronicity, and because your post may be the first genuine and heartfelt thing I've read in some time, I decided to register and make my first-ever post.

I, too, have experienced what you describe: So many things about reality right now are different from how I remember them being before a series of traumatic personal experiences befell, and I have wondered if I am in some kind of afterlife limbo (the Bardo, as it is described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead), and my daily experiences are in some way either self-inflicted or imposed by some unimaginable and seemingly omnipotent external force.

There is no advice I can offer, since I'm as much in the dark as anybody regarding the nature of my plight. In myself, I understand this as a kind of psychosis, and I have been advocating for my own treatment and doing my best to comply with the medical advice I have received. It isn't always easy when, as you described, each day is very like the previous, but since I trust that these medical professionals, for the most part, have my best interests at heart, I figure that if this really is the Bardo, then the best thing I can do is remain receptive and alert so that I can more easily absorb whatever lessons I'm being taught, or undergo whatever purification process it offers.

I have no illusion that absolutely everybody around is trying to help, and indeed, there may be some who, for whatever reason, try to thwart my progress. I can't say for certain whether they're all NPCs or if there are simply individuals who have a polar alignment opposite to my own and are reliably deceptive, but over time it has become easier to sense who can be trusted, and how far.

But I do not believe that such a state of affairs can be permanent, or that its purpose is solely to punish transgressors. It seems more and more obvious that my experiences are informed by my expectations, and my environment is most likely to be filled with the things I pay most attention to.

This is where things veer off into frankly mystical territory, so take it with a grain of salt, but there's a strange kind of tautology at work here: I'm certain that the experience of my senses cannot under normal circumstances be an accurate and complete reflection of how the Universe truly is, but it seems impossible that there would be anything here that doesn't contribute by its presence to the Wholeness of Everything, so at some point I must have proved some worth, and I find myself incredibly fortunate to be having this experience.

I guess I'm just hoping that you will not succumb to despair and hopelessness. It sounds hokey and kind of unrealistic for me to say so, but each day really is a gift, or it can be if seen with a certain openness and relaxed willingness to connect with and participate in the experiences it presents. At the same time, no truth I have found externally has stood the test of experience, and I've concluded that, ultimately, the Truth that can be found is only that which I will discover within. The inner work is often the most difficult, and I think it yields the most profound and lasting results.

I hope you're feeling well and optimistic today, and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to read and respond to your post.

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* I guess that's a pun, although I wasn't intending it at the moment.